Jonathan Carriel was born in Sutton, MA on May 28, 1734. The Carriel family was originally from Salem, MA. Jonathan’s father, Samuel, was born in Salem in 1693, just after the famous witch trials had ended. At the age of 26, Samuel married Rebecca Elliot from Boxford, MA. The following year, 1720, he was working as a cooper in Boxford when he and five other men purchased 500 acres of wilderness land in the new frontier community of Sutton.
Samuel had been a Cooper in Boxford, but now, in Sutton, the Carriel family would clear the land and be farmers. In a 1723 deed, where Samuel and the other men laid out the boundaries for each of their holdings, Samuel’s occupation is listed as husbandman.
This was the world that Jonathan Carriel grew up in. He was the ninth of eleven children born to Samuel and Rebecca. His uncle Daniel and several other Carriel relatives had moved to Sutton as well and raised families of their own. The name Carriel was well known and respected there.
In November 1756, Jonathan married Elizabeth Greenwood, daughter of Elder Daniel Greenwood, another prominent Sutton resident. It was also around that time that Jonathan, two of his brothers, and three of his cousins joined a group of other Sutton residents in colonial service during the French and Indian War. Jonathan, and some of the other men from Sutton, were part of the Crown Point Campaign to take Fort Saint-Frederic. We don’t know how, but town records report that Jonathan’s older brother, Samuel Jr., was one of six soldiers from Sutton killed in service during 1756.
Jonathan and Elizabeth were just starting their family together. Their first child, Jonathan Jr., was born in August 1757. Over the next twenty years they would have nine more children together, three more sons and six daughters.
By the time their youngest, Nathaniel, was born in January 1777, trouble had been brewing in the American colonies for quite some time. Sutton had a standing militia for general defense, but as tensions with Britain grew, communities like Sutton started adding Minute Companies, militia men who would be ready to serve on a moment’s notice. Men from Sutton joined others
around New England to march in response to the Lexington Alarm on April 19th, 1775.
Following that action, Sutton and neighboring towns raised ten companies of volunteers, organized under Col. Ebenezer Larned. This was the group that Jonathan Carriel initially joined. He enlisted on April 24, 1775, as a Lieutenant in Captain Arthur Dagget’s company. Initially, Larned’s Regiment was stationed at Roxbury, and on June 17th they witnessed the famous Battle of Bunker Hill. They formed a part of the right wing of the army which stretched from Dorchester through Roxbury to Boston to prevent the British from breaking through and making a flank movement.
A few months later, in August of that year, Captain Dagget died. Church records list the cause of death as camp disease. Jonathan Carriel was put in charge of the company with the temporary rank of captain. He was later commissioned as captain on Feb. 21, 1776, in Colonel Josiah Whitney’s regiment. Various records indicate that he continued to serve with that regiment throughout 1776.
Unfortunately, there are few details in those records that can tell us much about the nature of his service. We can learn more from the pension applications for some of the men who served under him. The Pension Act of 1832 required applicants to give detailed accounts of where they served and the officers they served under. Many years after the war, as an old man, David White recalled, “I enlisted April 1st, 1776, in the Massachusetts State Troops for 7 months under Capt. Jonathan Carriel … I went to Boston and was stationed at Point Shirley about 3 weeks and then went from there to Nantasket and served the remainder of the enlistment.”
Someone on behalf of Simeon Morse wrote, “He first went to Boston … At that time the greater part of the continental troops had marched for New York, but not the whole of them. He stayed at Boston but a short time and then he, with said company, were ordered to Nantasket, near the lighthouse about nine miles from said Boston, where he remained with said company until the expiration of seven months, the term of his enlistment.”
Amos Parsons added, “I was in the State service. We were at the Point during the summer. While we were there a boat of ours with seven men took a British vessel loaded with provisions from the enemy. She was brought in and the provisions won by the American Army at Nantasket.”
Point Shirley is located on a narrow peninsula that juts down from the north into the Atlantic Ocean east of Boston. Nantasket is on a similar peninsula that comes up from the south. Together they form the arms that create the harbor of Boston.
Jonathan’s service with the militia was over by 1777, and he returned to his home in Sutton. That year, he was appointed chairman of Sutton’s Committee of Correspondence, Inspection, and Safety, serving with several other returning officers and prominent citizens.
Jonathan’s wife, Elizabeth, died at the age of 44 in January 1781. Five of their children, Mary, Lydia, Sarah, Anna, and Nathan, were under the age of twelve. His older daughters still at home, Huldah, aged 13, and Elizabeth, aged 16, would have been a big help. In May 1783, Jonathan married 39-year-old Sarah Bartlett in her hometown of Roxbury, now a neighborhood in Boston. She was Sarah Hancock at the time. Her two previous husbands had both died, leaving her two young daughters now ages 8 and 11. She and Jonathan would have one child together, a daughter named Lucy, who was born in Groton, MA a year later.
No one knows when Jonathan Carriel died or where he was living at the time. September 1811 appears often in family trees as his death date, but it is never documented. It could be correct, but no town record or gravestone has been found to support it.
Searching for his final resting place, attempts have been made to trace Jonathan Carriel’s residence after the war. But the clues are few and difficult to follow. Having been born in Sutton, he was married there and raised a family with Elizabeth Greenwood. Their youngest child, Nathan, was born there in 1777. However, when Elizabeth died in 1781, she was buried in the Old Burying Ground Cemetery in Groton. And, after marrying Sarah Bartlett in her hometown of Roxbury in 1783, a year later, their child, Lucy, was born in Groton as well. Soon afterward, he moved his family to Lincoln, MA. A deed in March of 1783 shows him selling several parcels, about 200 acres, in Groton. Another deed in December 1784 lists his residence as Lincoln. Jonathan Carriel appeared in the 1790 census for Lincoln as well. But then, that was the last record for him.
A decade later, in 1800, a daughter, Lydia, was married in Lincoln, but the marriage intentions state that she was living in Sutton at the time. His youngest daughter, Lucy, got married in Sutton in 1802. It seems that sometime between 1790 and 1800 some family members moved from Lincoln back to Sutton. Did Jonathan move with them, or had he died during that period, and they returned to Sutton to live with other family members?
Sarah Carriel, Jonathan’s second wife, died years later, at the age of 84, in September 1827. She had been living with her youngest daughter, Lucy. Lucy’s husband, John Pierce, died in January of that year and was buried in Sutton’s Dodge Cemetery. When Sarah died eight months later, she was buried there as well. If there was grave somewhere for Jonathan Carriel, she could have been buried next to him. Unless, of course, he was already buried next to his first wife, Elizabeth. She has a large well-preserved marker in the cemetery in Groton. It identifies her as Elizabeth, the wife of Captain Jonathan Carriel. But there is no marker or cemetery record there for Captain Carriel.
And so, the mystery remains of whatever happened to Jonnathan Carriel. Perhaps someday, some type of record or document will come to light. But as of now, there exists no death or burial record, no will or probate document, not even a family Bible entry to tell us how his story ended.
–Submitted by descendant Robert Eager NSSAR# 179422.
Sources and References
MA Soldiers and Sailors of the Rev War Vol 3, p. 142.
Benedict & Tracy, History of the Town of Sutton Massachusetts from 1704 to 1876 (Worcester, MA, Sanford and Company, 1878), pp. 78, 616-617, 771-773.
Vital Records of Sutton Massachusetts (Worcester, MA, Franklin P. Rice, 1907), pp. 31-34, 224-226, 406, 412.
1720 Deed “Suffolk, Massachusetts, US records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9Z3-MZDB?view=fullText: Jan 27,2025); Suffolk County (Massachusetts). Register of Deeds, image 536 of 573.
1723 Deed “Suffolk, Massachusetts, US records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99ZS-
1XPB?view=fullText: Jan 27, 2025); Suffolk County (Massachusetts). Register of Deeds, image 127 of 588.
1783 Deed “Middlesex, Massachusetts, US records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9Z7-598Z?view=fullText: Jan 22, 2025); Middlesex County (Massachusetts). Register of Deeds), image 64 of 272.
1784 Deed “Suffolk, Massachusetts, US records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9Z3-SC39?view=fullText: Jan 21, 2025); Suffolk County (Massachusetts). Register of Deeds, image 662 of 841.
Goss & Zarowin, Massachusetts Officers and Soldiers in the French and Indian Wars, 1755-1756 (Soc. of Col. Wars in MA, 1985) p. 34.
NARA, Pub No. M804, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, Pension Number: S. 19864, David White.
NARA, Pub No. M804, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, Pension Number: S. 5097, Simeon Morse.
NARA, Pub No. M804, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, Pension Number: S. 21410, Amos Parsons.
1790 U.S. Federal Census, Lincoln, MA (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYYG-9ML3?view=index: Jan 22, 2025), image 370 of 771.
Find a Grave, (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/83252053/elizabeth-carriell), for Elizabeth Greenwood Carriell, Memorial ID 83252053.
Find a Grave, (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/149848558/sarah-carriel), for Sarah Carriel, Memorial ID 149848558.
Weaver, Ross, Historical Researcher – Worcester County, MA, email exchanges 2024-25.